Insulin can kill in an instant, hyperglycaemia usually will not. Insulin is a high alert drug because of its ability to throw people into dangerously low blood sugars, and the new insulin analogs are not even insulin but only insulin-like. Diabetics want and need a cure.
Sadly something is not quite right about how doctors conceptualize and treat diabetes. For the children the need to revisit diabetes is vital for there is an alarming rate of low blood sugars occurring in children at night. There are alarming reports of doctors now saying that diabetes is a "seizure disorder" because children are having so many seizures from low blood sugars, the kinds of seizures that cause cognitive changes in the brain of developing children. Doctors are telling parents to expect these seizures, and that they are part and parcel of diabetes. This is not quite true, but often results in putting children on anti-seizure medicine instead of doing something more fundamental to address the low blood sugar.
Blood glucose levels should be measured as frequently as the patient wishes, simply, painlessly, accurately and quickly. It is generally accepted that blood glucose monitoring reduces the risk of complications such as retinopathy leading to blindness; neuropathy or nerve complications; nephropathy or kidney disease and cardiac disease amongst insulin dependent diabetics.
Diabetes is disabling, deadly and on the rise. If the number of heart related deaths caused by diabetes is added to the diabetes statistics diabetes is the biggest killer in the United States.
Diabetes is a fundamental disease that affects the entire colony of cells in a person because it has to do with energy metabolism and the vastly important hormone insulin and its receptor sites. All life is dependent upon basic metabolism, the input of nutrients and removal of wastes. Insulin allows blood sugar (glucose) to be transported into cells so that they can produce energy or store the glucose until it is needed. Insulin binds with receptors on cells like a key would fit into a lock. Once the key insulin has unlocked the door, the glucose can pass from the blood into the cell. Inside the cell, glucose is either used for energy or stored for future use in the form of glycogen in liver or muscle cells. Most of the food we eat is turned into glucose, which serves as our main source of energy. Insulin is the key for the body's trillions of cells, without it glucose can't get into the cells, so the cells begin to starve. This is all part of a vast network where cells communicate with the intercellular environment through thousands of receptor sites on cell surfaces that respond to thousands of specific molecules (ligands) that bind to these receptors. A receptor that is bound to its activating ligand causes biochemical changes to occur inside the cell. Any problem in this constant communication dynamic between ligands and receptor sites result in disease.
Diabetes is often conceptualized as a severe imbalance of part of endocrine system that destroys our ability to metabolize food. The unbalance results in elevated levels of insulin, a lack of insulin, or the cell insulin receptor sites becoming insensitive to insulin. Though we are going to present a non-nutritional and non-lifestyle trigger that sparks a decline into diabetes, the fact remains that the disease has to do with cell nutrition. The essential elements of nutrition will always be important for any lack will make it more difficult for the body to compensate for and correct any systemic problem no matter what the cause.
Clearly diabetes is disabling, deadly and on the rise. The incidence of diabetes is skyrocketing not only in adults but in the juvenile population as well. Healthcare experts have called the alarming rise in diabetes and its related complications "an epidemic" that threatens to spiral out of control. In 1997 15.7 millions adults in the United States were reported to have diabetes. By the year 2002, this number had already swelled to 18.0 million or 8.7% of all adults. Diabetes and its complications now claim hundred of thousands of lives in the U.S. each year, incurring total expenses of over $130 billion in direct and indirect costs to the healthcare system. Worldwide, the number of people with adult-onset diabetes is predicted to explode in the next 10 years, doubling to an estimated 221 million people. By contrast, only 43,171 people in the United States were diagnosed with AIDS and only 18,017 died.
If we add the number of heart related deaths caused by diabetes to the diabetes statistics we actually find that diabetes is the biggest killer in the United States. This means that the above statistics understate the problem. Thus it would help a lot of people if we could isolate a basic cause for this disease. Though there are several important causes/factors contributing to the dramatic rise in diabetes, the core cause has eluded scientists and doctors - meaning a cure to diabetes has not been found. This medical review sifts the focus away from typical diabetic etiologies and suggests we concentrate on causes that can quickly bring on diabetes through intense chemical exposure or slowly through decades of low level chronic exposure.
A growing number of children are visiting paediatric cardiologists to treat their high cholesterol, or seeing endocrinologists to keep their diabetes in check. In short, kids are "catching" the diseases that kill most adults," wrote Krista Ramsey of the Cincinnati Enquirer. "The picture has been on the wall, but we've just refused to see it," said Dr. Larry Fox, medical director of the Northeast Florida Paediatric Diabetes Center in Jacksonville. "We have to realize that the kidney disease and heart disease we used to see in people in their 50s and 60s - who developed Type II diabetes in their 40s - we're now going to see in people in their late 20s and 30s. If we don't do something about it, our grandchildren are going to go blind in their 20s."
Diabetes is a fundamental disease that affects the entire colony of cells in a person because it has to do with energy metabolism and the vastly important hormone insulin and its receptor sites. All life is dependent upon basic metabolism, the input of nutrients and removal of wastes. Insulin allows blood sugar (glucose) to be transported into cells so that they can produce energy or store the glucose until it is needed. Insulin binds with receptors on cells like a key would fit into a lock. Once the key insulin has unlocked the door, the glucose can pass from the blood into the cell. Inside the cell, glucose is either used for energy or stored for future use in the form of glycogen in liver or muscle cells. Most of the food we eat is turned into glucose, which serves as our main source of energy. Insulin is the key for the body's trillions of cells, without it glucose can't get into the cells, so the cells begin to starve. This is all part of a vast network where cells communicate with the intercellular environment through thousands of receptor sites on cell surfaces that respond to thousands of specific molecules (ligands) that bind to these receptors. A receptor that is bound to its activating ligand causes biochemical changes to occur inside the cell. Any problem in this constant communication dynamic between ligands and receptor sites result in disease.
